Correlation between Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations and Excess Mortality in the OWID Dataset

import warnings
warnings.simplefilter(action='ignore', category=FutureWarning)
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import plotly.express as px
import plotly.figure_factory as ff

Get and Process the Data

We get the data from OWID and interpolate/upsample the missing values weekly.

d=pd.read_excel('https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.xlsx')

max_date=max(d['date'])
print(max_date)

2022-04-25

Filter Out Countries With Insufficient Data

If there is no single row with both Vaccinations and Excess Mortality data we have nothing to work with. So we filter such countries out completely.

country_corr=d.groupby('iso_code')[
    ['excess_mortality','total_vaccinations_per_hundred']
                                  ].corr().unstack().iloc[:,1].reset_index()

country_corr.columns=['iso_code','correlation']

countries_worth_looking_at=list(
    country_corr[~country_corr['correlation'].isna()]
    .sort_values(
        'correlation'
        ,ascending=False
    )['iso_code']
)

country_corr_dict=dict(zip(country_corr.iso_code, country_corr.iso_code + country_corr.correlation.apply( " {0:.2f}".format) ))

dfc = d[(d['iso_code'].isin(countries_worth_looking_at))].copy()

Interpolate The Data By Backfilling

Some countries have the data reported monthly while others have missing data points. We resample everything to the weekly grane and interpolate via backfilling. This way the vaccination time series before the start of reporting are backfilled with a static value (first value in time serie), mostly close to zero. This makes the year 2020 kind of a synthetic control in regard to the vaccination treatment.

# resample needs datetime index
dfc['datetime'] = pd.to_datetime(dfc['date'])
dfc.index = dfc['datetime']
del dfc['datetime']

# we use the mean() function to fill the missing values with the NAs
dfi=dfc.groupby('iso_code').resample('W').mean().reset_index()
dfi.index = pd.to_datetime(dfi['datetime'])
del dfi['datetime']

# interpolation within countries
for i in range(len(dfi.iso_code.unique())):
    mask = dfi.loc[:,'iso_code']==dfi.iso_code.unique()[i]
    dfi[mask]=dfi[mask].interpolate(method='bfill')
dfi.reset_index(inplace=True)

Overall Correlation between Vaccinations and Excess Mortality

print('Correlation total_vaccinations_per_hundred and excess_mortality ='
      ,'\x1b[1;30;30m{:.2f}\x1b[m'.format(
    dfi[['excess_mortality', 'total_vaccinations_per_hundred']].corr().unstack()[1])) 

Correlation total_vaccinations_per_hundred and excess_mortality = -0.04

At the moment of writing the correlation is close to zero (-0.04). Let's de-average the overal value by calculating the correlation per country.

De-averaging Of The Correlation By Country

We chart correlation between excess_mortality and total_vaccinations_per_hundred (and other vaccination metrics) per country to make sure the data is sane.

The Choropleth Charts give an idea how the correlation is distibuted over the globe. May be there is some role the seasonality plays in the resulting in-country corellation.

The Histograms show that the in-country correlation is kinda evenly distributed over the whole [-1:1] interval and there are no visible ouliers.

for metric in ['total_vaccinations_per_hundred'
               , 'people_vaccinated_per_hundred'
               , 'people_fully_vaccinated_per_hundred'
               , 'total_boosters_per_hundred'
               , 'new_cases_per_million' ]:
    
    country_corr=dfc.groupby('iso_code')[
        ['excess_mortality', metric]
                   ].corr().unstack().iloc[:,1].reset_index()
    
    colname = 'correlation excess_mortality and ' + metric

    country_corr.columns=['iso_code', colname]
    
    fig = px.choropleth (
        country_corr,
        locationmode = 'ISO-3',
        locations = 'iso_code',
        color = colname,
    )
    fig.update_traces(
        showlegend=False
        , selector=dict(type='choropleth'))
    fig.update_layout(
        width=2048,
        height=800,
        title_text=colname,
        geo=dict( showcoastlines=False,),
        coloraxis_colorbar=dict( title='Scale, Correlation',),
        )
    fig.show('png')   
    
    fig=ff.create_distplot(
        [country_corr.dropna()[colname]]
        , [colname]
        , bin_size=.2
        , histnorm = 'probability'
    )
    fig.update_layout(
        title_text='Country distribution over the correlation [-1:1] and kernel density estimation'
        , xaxis_title="Countries over Correlation per Country"
        , yaxis_title="Probabililty and Kernel Density Estimation"
        , legend_x=0 
    )
    fig.show()

Interpolated Data For Visual Control

# let's add a helper column for facet titles
dfi['cntr']=dfi['iso_code'].replace(country_corr_dict, inplace=False)

fig = px.line(dfi,    
              x='datetime',
              y=['total_vaccinations_per_hundred','excess_mortality'],
              facet_col='cntr', 
              category_orders={'iso_code':sorted(countries_worth_looking_at)},
              facet_col_wrap=4,
              facet_row_spacing=0.01,
              height=6000, #width=800, # change to fit your output media 
              labels={
                  "value": "per hundred / percent",
                  "variable": "",
              },
              title="Country Charts and Corr, Time Series Backfilled Weekly, Jan 2020 - "+str(max_date),              
             )
           
fig.update_layout(
    legend=dict(
        yanchor="top",
        y=0.999,
        xanchor="left",
        x=0.01
    ),
    xaxis_title="Weekly Data Jan 2020 - Jan 2022"             
)

fig.update_yaxes(range=[-50, 250])

fig.show() # we can't use 'png' here in JupyterLab as the charts get scrambled, a plotly bug?

Obligatory XKCD parabole

Permanent link to this comic: https://xkcd.com/925/

Vaccine is present/absent

Correlation between excess_mortality and total_vaccinations_per_hundred in countries where a vaccine is present/absent

For each vaccine we split all countries into two groups as per vaccine presence and calculate the correlation within those two group. Obviously there are countries with multiple vaccine present. And some vaccine may only come together in all countries. Yet the results are interesting and non-trivial.

v=pd.read_csv('https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/raw/master/public/data/vaccinations/locations.csv', sep=',', quotechar='"'
              , header=0, usecols=['iso_code', 'vaccines'], dtype={'iso_code':'str','vaccines':'str'} )

from sklearn.preprocessing import MultiLabelBinarizer 
# convert to contain lists instead of plain text 
# TODO: get rid of leading spaces or whatever blanks they are instead of dropping all spaces.
v['vaccines']=v['vaccines'].str.replace(r'[^a-zA-Z,]+',r'').str.split(',') 

# break into indicator variables 
mlb = MultiLabelBinarizer() 
indicators = pd.DataFrame(mlb.fit_transform(v['vaccines']), 
                          columns=mlb.classes_, index=v.index)
vac_list=list(mlb.classes_)
vac_list

['Abdala',
 'COVIranBarekat',
 'CanSino',
 'Covaxin',
 'EpiVacCorona',
 'FAKHRAVAC',
 'IMBCAMS',
 'JohnsonJohnson',
 'KCONVAC',
 'Medigen',
 'Moderna',
 'Novavax',
 'OxfordAstraZeneca',
 'PfizerBioNTech',
 'QazVac',
 'RaziCovPars',
 'SinopharmBeijing',
 'SinopharmWuhan',
 'Sinovac',
 'Soberana',
 'SoberanaPlus',
 'SpikoGen',
 'SputnikLight',
 'SputnikV',
 'Turkovac',
 'ZF']

v = pd.concat([v.reset_index(drop=True), 
                indicators.reset_index(drop=True)], axis=1) 

v.set_index('iso_code', drop=True, inplace=True)

dfi=dfi.join(v, on='iso_code')

def get_vac_corr(vac):
        vac_corr=dfi.groupby(vac)['excess_mortality','total_vaccinations_per_hundred'].corr() 
        vac_corr1 = vac_corr.stack().reset_index()
        vac_corr1.columns = ['vaccine_presence_ind','b','c','correlation']
        vac_corr1.vaccine_presence_ind.replace([0,1],['absent','present'], inplace=True)
        vac_corr1['vaccine_name']=vac
        corr_per_vac = vac_corr1.loc[ 
            vac_corr1.b.isin(['excess_mortality']) & vac_corr1.c.isin(['total_vaccinations_per_hundred'])
            , ['vaccine_name','vaccine_presence_ind','correlation'] 
        ] 
        return corr_per_vac   
    
vac_corrs = pd.concat(  get_vac_corr(vac) for vac in vac_list).reset_index() 
del vac_corrs['index']
print(vac_corrs)

         vaccine_name vaccine_presence_ind  correlation
0              Abdala               absent    -0.043188
1      COVIranBarekat               absent    -0.040201
2      COVIranBarekat              present    -0.223644
3             CanSino               absent    -0.042950
4             CanSino              present    -0.051913
5             Covaxin               absent    -0.045122
6             Covaxin              present     0.049476
7        EpiVacCorona               absent    -0.044544
8        EpiVacCorona              present     0.454666
9           FAKHRAVAC               absent    -0.040201
10          FAKHRAVAC              present    -0.223644
11            IMBCAMS               absent    -0.043188
12     JohnsonJohnson               absent    -0.027008
13     JohnsonJohnson              present    -0.065483
14            KCONVAC               absent    -0.043188
15            Medigen               absent    -0.044645
16            Medigen              present     0.220145
17            Moderna               absent    -0.020840
18            Moderna              present    -0.033159
19            Novavax               absent    -0.047252
20            Novavax              present     0.024539
21  OxfordAstraZeneca               absent     0.038135
22  OxfordAstraZeneca              present    -0.060572
23     PfizerBioNTech               absent     0.092238
24     PfizerBioNTech              present    -0.048889
25             QazVac               absent    -0.044752
26             QazVac              present     0.230302
27        RaziCovPars               absent    -0.040201
28        RaziCovPars              present    -0.223644
29   SinopharmBeijing               absent    -0.044745
30   SinopharmBeijing              present     0.021593
31     SinopharmWuhan               absent    -0.039265
32     SinopharmWuhan              present     0.084242
33            Sinovac               absent    -0.037769
34            Sinovac              present    -0.016938
35           Soberana               absent    -0.040201
36           Soberana              present    -0.223644
37       SoberanaPlus               absent    -0.043188
38           SpikoGen               absent    -0.040201
39           SpikoGen              present    -0.223644
40       SputnikLight               absent    -0.044740
41       SputnikLight              present     0.040036
42           SputnikV               absent    -0.010810
43           SputnikV              present    -0.019631
44           Turkovac               absent    -0.043188
45                 ZF               absent    -0.042883
46                 ZF              present    -0.132376

fig = px.bar(vac_corrs
             ,x='vaccine_name'
             ,y='correlation'
             ,color='vaccine_presence_ind'
             ,color_discrete_sequence=["grey","blue",]
             ,barmode="group"
             ,title="""Correlation between excess_mortality and total_vaccinations_per_hundred 
<br>in countries grouped by vaccine presence/absence."""
             , height=600, width=1000, # change to fit your output media
             ).update_xaxes(categoryorder ='max descending').show()

Copyright and Getting the Data

Copyright 2021 Abbrivia GmbH https://www.abbrivia.com CC-BY (By Attribution) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode Reuse our work freely!

All visualizations, and code produced in this notebook are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

The data produced by third parties and made available by "Our World in Data" is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. Check the license of any third-party data before use and redistribution on 'https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus' site (see below).

See the defintions and further discussion on the used dataset at the "Our World in Data" site https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

The data is taken specifically from https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.xlsx file

Hannah Ritchie, Edouard Mathieu, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Cameron Appel, Charlie Giattino, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, Diana Beltekian and Max Roser (2020) - "Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus' [Online Resource]

We use Excel file because it contains the data format information in itself. If you want to run this more often consider manually downloading the data and sourcing it locally as shown in the next line (commented out).